In 1992, Lennie Smith was jailed for ten years for raping a six-year-old boy in Hackney – but our documents show his litany of north London sex crimes began over a decade earlier in Kentish Town.
However, he is widely believed to have evaded justice over his most serious offences against defenceless children.
In the late 1980s, Homerton’s Kingsmead estate became the centre of a national media furore after it emerged murdered schoolboy Jason Swift had been seen there with Smith.
He was arrested and charged with Jason’s murder after being implicated by other paedophiles in the brutal gang rape that led to the 14-year-old’s death.
But he avoided a trial by successfully arguing the charge should be dropped, as the only witnesses against him were untrustworthy child abusers who were themselves linked to the killing.
Smith’s gang, known as the Dirty Dozen, was linked to two more child killings – Barry Lewis, 6, from Walworth, and Mark Tildesley, 7, from Wokingham.
Police files obtained by Newsquest under the Freedom of Information Act show Smith received his first child sex conviction in June 1977, in north London.
A police mugshot of Lennie Smith from 1977 – the same year he was first convicted of a child sex offence. The police files were stored on microfiche, affecting the quality of the image (Image: National Police Chiefs Council) Born in Machynlleth, Wales, in August 1954, he went to school in Shrewsbury but left aged 14 and spent his late teens in a children’s home.
It’s not known exactly when he arrived in London, but police files show he received a suspended sentence in 1975 for thefts from NatWest Bank in Piccadilly Circus and Village Gate clothing in Oxford Street.
He was living in a squat in Cambray Park, Balham, at the time.
In 1976, he committed gross indecency with a 13-year-old boy in Bramshill Gardens, Dartmouth Park.
He was prosecuted with at least one other person, whose details have not been disclosed, and was convicted in 1977.
He was jailed for a year.
In June 1979, he was convicted of gross indecency in a public toilet in Peter Street, Soho. West End police recorded him as homeless and sleeping in all-night cinemas.
Later that year – despite being a convicted paedophile – he got a job in a West Bromwich Council swimming pool.
A 1993 book – Lambs to the Slaughter – said Smith and another paedophile, Jack Parsons (now dead), shared a Westcliff bedsit and used an arcade to groom and traffic boys.
Electoral registers reviewed by Newsquest show Parsons was registered at an address in San Remo Parade, Westcliff, which is also given as Smith’s address in the police records we uncovered.
In recent years, Smith and his former Westcliff address have been linked by an Essex Police investigation to a 1980s paedophile network known as the “Shoebury Sex Ring” – but he was never prosecuted for sex offences in Southend.
Files show he had moved to Ashmead House, on Hackney’s Kingsmead estate, by 1984, when he was arrested on suspicion of importuning at a public toilet in Seven Sisters Road.
He was convicted in June 1987 of gross indecency on a male aged 16 or over and sentenced to 30 months.
Four months later, he was arrested for the murder of Jason Swift.
Jason, 14, from Hackney, was missing for months before he was found dead in a shallow grave in Essex in November 1985.
The teen also had Islington links.
While he avoided trial over Jason’s death, he was arrested again in 1990 – by then lodging with a male friend on Finsbury Park’s Woodberry Down estate – for gross indecency with a child in a public toilet on Lordship Lane, Tottenham.
He got three years.
Files generated in that case recorded his nickname as “Mavis”.
Smith was convicted in 1992 of offences against the little boy, including buggery (rape). He received a further 10 years.
By the time he was released, he was such a national hate figure that he chose to remain in a secure unit for his own safety.
He died in 2006, taking to his grave whatever information he possessed about the Dirty Dozen’s child killings and the Shoebury paedophile ring.
